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THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 



SEMI-CENTENNIAL ADDRESS 



ALUMNI OF YALE COLLEGE, 



GRADUATES OF 1814. 



AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING, 



JUJLT 27, 1864. 



BY SAMUEL B. RUGGLES, LL. D. 



Printed by order of the Alumni, 



NEW YOKE: 
PUBLISHED BY D. APPLETON k CO., 

448 & 445 BROADWAY. 

1864. 






> 






Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
Samuel B. Ruggles, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern 
District of New York. 



Wm. C. Brvant & Co., Printers, 41 Nassau St., cor. Liberty, New York. 



SUMMARY. 



Historical interest and importance of the last fifty years, . 

Empire of the First Napoleon — War with England — Victories of Man 

over Nature — The present Napoleon — The EebelUon, 
y/ Steady progress of the College during the fifty years, 
Its wise distribution of Letters, Science, and Theology, 
Dean Berkeley's " Bounty," — "Vanessa," . 
Struggle of Science with Theology in Papal ages, 
Progress of Copernicus, — Galileo, — Newton, 
Overthrow of the Ptolemaic System in Yale, 
Planetary and Meteoric Discoveries in the fifty years, 
Metals in the Solar Mass— Early Studies of Silliman, 
Contending Geological Theories, — Fire and Water, . 
Gigantic pre-Adamite species, — animal and vegetable. 
Liberal encouragement of Geological Science by State of New 
Continental efforts and teachings of Silliman— their results, 
Concordat between Science and Theology, 
Educating influence of Scientific Studies, .... 
Character and Oratory of Pericles, and of Webster, elevated by 

study of nature, ..'..... 
Historical antecedents and accessories of the Class of 1814, 
Overshadowing Power of the First Napoleon, . 
Aggressions on the United States by France and England, 
Definition of Political Parties — their opposing theories. 

President Dwight as a politician, 

Sympathies with England struggling for freedom of the world, 
How repaid— -"J. ?a5ama,"-— Long-standing malignity of London Times, 



York 



thei 



PAOB 

4 

5 
5 
6 

7 
7 



10 
11 
12 
14 
15 
16 
17 
18 

19-20 
21 
22 
25 
26 
27 
28 
29 



IV 



Victories of Macdonougk atid Jackson — Treaty of Peace, ^ 

Modification of views in respect to Napoleon, . 

Fanatical opposition to bis civic reforms — Metric System in Italy, 

Public Works of the last fifty years, .... 

" Continental System " of Clinton and his followers, 

Enormous addition in the fifty years by steam to human forces. 

Early prediction of Pacific Railway by Dwight, 

Uniform support by Graduates of Yale, of our Public Works, 

Their high political importance to the National Union, . 

Tribute to President Day and his teachings, .... 

Electric Telegraph — its triumphs and progress — Morse ; Sibley ; Field 

Collins, 

Louis Napoleon — vigor and success of his civic administration, 
Comparative pecuniary growth of France and the United States, 
Future increase in the United States, will pay the public debt, 
Louis Napoleon's proposed Interoceanic Canal, 
Extracts from his pamphlet in 1846 ; his opinion then of Slavery, 
Will he now interfere in favor of Slavery ? . . . . 

General character of pending Rebellion, as typified by destruction 

Light-houses, 

Our power and our duty to uphold the Union, .... 



of 



30 
31 
32 
33 
33 
33 

34: 

35 
35 
36 

36 
37 
37 
37 
38 
40 
41 

43 
44 



ADDRESS 



Bkethken of the Alumni of Y'ale, and Fellow Students 
OF THE Class of 1814: 

Amono- the numerous works of art which we owe to the taste 
and the feeling of our modern painters, is one which many, if 
not most of us, have seen and enjoyed. It is the picture of the 
aged grandfather, with silver locks and feeble limbs, bending 
under the weight of many years, but gazing with tender inter- 
est and rekindling eye upon a portrait of himself, when a fair- 
haired boy in the early morning of life. The canvas faithfully 
exhibits that peculiarity of man's intellectual decay, which ob- 
scuring or obliterating the busy scenes of active manhood and 
even of advancing age, preserves, in imperishable freshness, the 
sharply sculptured memories of his youthful hours, 

I cannot but feel that a kindred emotion animates the time- 
worn Class of 1814, that has to-day come home to these 
academic shades, to evoke, from the sleep of half a century, its 
own youthful image, to retrace and recover its early lineaments, 
to catch once more its lights and shadows, and fondly to repro- 
duce and cluster around it some at least of the external acces- 
sories, which gave to that young life its form and features. 

The stream of time, embraced within this interval, is surely 
lone: enoug-h to have become historical. It includes more than 
a fortieth part of the nineteen centuries of the Christian era ; 



for it is now fifty years since our Class, then eighty-two in 
number, went forth from this honored seat of learning, to bear 
its part in the great drama of American life, to march onward 
and forward with the young Eepublic of the Western World. 
The wayfaring has been long and sometimes wear}-. Our path, 
at times, has been strewed with thorns, or darkened by sorrow. 
Nearly two-thirds of the youthful band have fallen by the way, 
but, in God's kind Providence, a goodly remnant has been 
allowed cheerfully and hopefully to reach the present eminence, 
permitting a moment of repose in which to survey the wide- 
spread and varied landscape it has left behind. 

To the youngest of these survivors, the undue parti- 
ality of loving friends has committed the task of sketch- 
ing, however imperfectly, the leading outlines of this historic 
picture. If he do not wholly fail, it will be because the magni- 
tude and the grandeur of the prominent objects within the field 
of view, imprint their profile too sharply on the sky to be mis- 
taken. 

The great historical landmarks within the eventful era in 
which our Class has been permitted to live, are manifest, indeed, 
not only to ourselves, but to the world around us. In the dark 
background of the picture is the French Revolution, with all its 
sufferings and all its conquests, closely followed by its natural 
and logical result, the great and overshadowing Empire of the 
first Napoleon. Side by side we see the American Union, just 
emerging from its cradle, but waging war, even in its earliest 
years, successively w'ith France and England. The struggle 
closes in the very year in which our Class left the College. 

The broad middle ground of the picture, extending from 1814 
to 1860, covers nearly all its surface. It brings in the golden 
era of modern history, rich with the works of civilization and 
humanity, and glorious with the victories of Man over Nature, 
but curiously exhibiting, in bold relief, another Napoleon, wjio 



proclaims his Empire to be Peace. The narrow foreground of 
the last four years, alas ! is deeply shadowed ; for it is filled by 
the opening scenes of a vast, unfinished tragedy, and is lurid 
and ghastly with the fire, and blood and slaughter of the impious 
and parricidal war, seeking to dismember, disintegrate and for- 
ever destroy our great Kepublic. 

Amid all the lights and shadows of these portentous events, it 
is cheering to perceive our honored College, serenely and 
steadily pursuing, with vigorous and elastic step, its appointed 
course, and keeping fully up to the changing necessities and 
vicissitudes of the surrounding world. The thought is pleasant 
and refreshing. Let us briefly pursue it, and perchance forget, 
for the moment, the madness and fury of the storm which rages 
around us. 

I am not here to-day to argue or to agitate any temporary ques- 
tion of party politics, and shall only state historically the political 
attitude and influence of the College, fifty years ago. Nor shall 
I refer, except in very general terms, to the causes, condition or 
probable results of the pending Eebellion. Xor am 1 here to 
discuss any educational question whatever, or any controverted 
point on the comparative merits of classics, or mathematics, or 
physical science, or theology, as elements of college culture. On 
that subject, I hold to the very comprehensive and catholic 
creed of a brilliant though somewhat fantastic writer of these 
modern days, who maintains, that there are in this world 
but three things which a man needs to know, — w^hich are, 
1st, What he is; 2d, Where he is ; and 3d, Where he is going ; 
— necessarily embracing under the first the whole history, and 
literature, and intellectual constitution of Man, with all his 
deeds, words, and thoughts, in all countries and ages;— under 
the semnd, all tlie physical and mathematical laws which regu- 
late and govern the material universe, of which he is a part ; — 
under the third, his progress, individual and political, in the 



world below, and his progress, moral and religious, toward the 
Heaven above. Condensed still more briefly, under the generic 
heads of classics, science, and theology, I only claim, that 
every wisely managed College will unite them all in due propor- 
tion. 

It is the distinguishing characteristic of this venerable institu- 
tion, now foremost among the first of American Colleges,^ that 
from her very foundation, nearly one hundred and seventy years 
ago, she has commingled these three cardinal elements of educa- 
tional culture, with nice and skilful hand. Especially is it true 
in respect to the contending claims of science and letters, which 
she has ever kept in just and harmonious equilibrium ; wisely using 
the strength of the one to invigorate the elegance of the other, 
and, in its turn, adorning the vigor of science with the grace and 
polish of classic culture. Her earliest teachings in the very in- 
fancy of our colonial history, received their tone and flavor 
from Bekkeley, Dean of Derry, and afterwards Bishop of 
Clo^me, eminent alike as a philosopher and a lover of letters, — 
the income of whose well-timed and judicious endowment, 
gratefully recognized for a century and a half as " The 
Dean's Bounty," annually rewards the successful competitor in 
the language and literature of Greece and Rome. The germ 
thus wisely planted, has borne its precioiis fruits, in the long 
line of classical scholars, coming down through her early and 
learned Presidents and Professors to their honored successors, 
who now grace this assembly with their presence. It probably 
has not chilled the ardor of the young aspirants for the prize to 
know, that Berkeley had been enabled to make this endow- 



1 The competition of Yale and Harvard is very close. The triennial 
catalogues of the two institutions show, that in the 162 years from the first 
"Commencement" of Yale, she passed 7,116 academical students to the de- 
gree of Bachelor of Arts. During the same period, Harvard passed 6,973. 
The number graduated by the two Colleges in 1862, was precisely the same, being 
96 in each. 



ment, by a legacy of what Charles Lajvib calls " a trifle of four 
thousand pounds," lovingly bequeathed to him by the well- 
known Hester Yanhomrigh, the " Yanessa" of Swift, whose ar- 
dent but scantily requited passion for that eminent but very 
surly ecclesiastic, has made her name immortal. May w^e not 
trace even to this remote and romantic source, the lively per- 
ception by some of our accomplished graduates, ^ of the peculiar 
beauties of Catullus and Anacreon ? 

In cultivating the taste for polite learning, the College 
has not lost sight of the proper claims of mathematical and 
physical science, still less of sound theology ; all of wdiich she 
has kept in wise conjunction. She has manifested her wis 
dom especially in disregarding or reconciling those imaginary 
antagonisms between the two great Revelations of the Divine 
Being in His Word and in His Works, wliich have caused 
such unnecessary alarm in other quarters. 

It is a noteworthy circumstance, that the College came into 
being just as the morning was breaking on that long and dismal 
night, in which ecclesiastical ambition had arrogantly assumed 
not only to regulate the political affairs of Christendom, but to 
establish authoritatively the history and the material laws of 
the creation. !N'ot content with fanatically burning the written 
treasures of the classic ages of antiquity, it had practically ban- 
ished physical science from Christian Europe, to find refuge 
and protection, for several centuries, under the more liberal 
rule of the Saracen Caliphs. In this deep and memorable 
eclipse, the great truths of astronomy, of mathematics, of medi^ 
cine, with prophetic glimpses even of geology^ for want of 
Christian students on the Thames, the Seine, and the Tiber, 
were uttered to Mahomedan ears on the Tigris, the Euphrates^ 



2 Mr. Charles Astoe Bristed was a successful competitor ia 1839 for "The 
l)ean'3 Bounty." He has since published an American edition of Catullus, with 
interesting and valuable notes. 



8 



and the Nile. Every attempt in Cliristendom, by tlie votaries of 
enlightened science, to pierce the gloom, was repaid by the prison 
or the faggot. As late as 1543, near the middle of the sixteenth 
century, and more than fifty years after Columbus had reached 
America, Copeknicus was excommunicated by the Church of 
Rome for the deadly offence of asserting the sun to be the 
centre of the solar system ; while half a century later, Beuxo, 
who ventured to avow the same belief with other heresies, 
was burned at the stake. 

In 1642, the aged Galileo, whose newly invented telescope 
had summoned down to earth the satellites of Jupiter, as wit- 
nesses to verify the heliocentric theory of Copeenicus, after being 
compelled by torture to assert the immobility of the earth, was 
confined for the residue of his life in the prisons of the Inquisi- 
tion ; while the ancient Ptolemaic, or geocentric theory, with 
the earth for the centre, entangled in a complicated and in- 
coherent web of cycles and epicycles, was announced by Papal 
authority as a dogma of scriptural truth, with fire, and flame 
and death, as the penalty for unbelief. It is a little refreshing 
to know that Alphonso the Tenth, the king of Catholic Castile, 
had ventured, two centuries before, to creep out of this dark- 
ness far enough to earnestly assert, though with a tinge of ir- 
reverence, that if the creation of the world had been left to him, 
he would have had no cycles or epicycles ; but the general mind 
of Christendom remained in manacles until emancipated by the 
transcendent genius of Newtox. 

By a providential compensation, that illustrious mathema- 
tician came into the world in the very year in which Galileo left 
it, bringing with him the mighty engine of the calculus, measuring 
all the perturbations^ and unravelling all the intricacies of the 
celestial system, and correcting any minor errors of Copeenicus, 
The immortal " Principia " were first published in 1687, pre- 
cfeding, by less than twenty years, the foundation of Yale Col- 



lege. The fact is strange and curious, that even here in emanci- 
pated America, the Ptolemaic or geocentric theory, enforced by 
Papal assumption upon the dark ages, was actually taught for 
several years, within these very walls. It was not until 1T18 
that the light of the heliocentric system was first let in, throuo-h 
the efforts of the clear-sighted Doctor Samuel Jounson, then a 
Tutor in the College, and who in due season would have become 
its President, but for his ill-timed doubts of the validity of 
Presbyterian ordination. A copy of the " Principia," sent out 
from Europe, had reached the little college library, upon which 
the youthful Johnson entered with great avidity, after stud vino- 
the higher mathematics for the purpose, " Till tlien," says his 
biographer, " the Ptolemaic system of the world was as strongly 
" believed as the Holy Scriptures ; but Johnson was soon able 
" to overthrow it, and establish on its ruins the doctrine of 
" Copernicus." The heliocentric system at once illuminated 
the College, and here it will continue to pour forth its magnificent 
light until the College, and the Earth, and the Sun, and tlie 
Stars, shall be no more. Poor old Copernicus, who in his dying 
hours had sought, by a letter of dedication, to disarm the oj)posi- 
tion of the Pope, was lying in his grave on the Baltic, carefully 
covered by the Papal excommunication, which was not formally 
annulled by the Vatican until the year 1821, seven years after our 
Class left college. Since that time, the Church of Rome, claiming 
to be the chosen keeper and interpreter of Holy "Writ, together 
with the residue of the Christian world, have permitted the 
students of the Pentateuch to read the Genesis, by the light 
of Copernicus and ISTewton. 

It will be gratifying and comforting to know that our Class of 
1814, since it left these walls, has been faithfully carried fifty 
times around the centre of the solar system thus established, 
punctually coming, as in College, and especially at morning 
prayers, we did not always punctually come, " up to time" — 
2 



10 



and further, that the sun himself, with his whole cortege of 
planets and other minor attendants, has been carefully and safely 
running his appointed course through the vast abyss of stellar 
space, at the comparatively dignified pace of 400,000 miles a 
day, steadily "making," in nautical phrase, for a point in the 
constellation Hercules. "Within this celestial period, the mathe- 
maticians of the College have not been idle ; although for 
want of that enlarged Astronomical Observatory, which the 
alumni now and here assembled expressly admit and declare 
that they owe the College, — its astronomers have not been 
able, by their own visual organs, to fathom all the depths of 
the heavens. But they have vigilantly and faithfully followed 
in the w^ake of the actual observers. They have carefully chroni- 
cled the birth of the numerous family of Asteroids, now nearly 
eighty strong, exhausting in their baptism nearly all the names 
in the classic mythology, and throwing quite in the shade that 
modest little group, that jpartie car re e. of Juno, Yesta, Pallas, 
and Ceres, whom we knew in College. They profoundly partici' 
pated in the sublime emotion kindled in the scientific world by 
the recent discovery of Neptune, pursuing his remote and lonely 
voyage along the outer circle of planetarj^ space, and the conse- 
quent addition of more than two thousand millions of miles to 
the pre-existing estimate of the diameter of the solar system. 
But more especially has it been theirs, to share still more largely 
and almost exclusively, in the labor and in the honor of the bril- 
liant exploring expeditions in the great Archipelago of the 
meteoric world. They have virtually monopolized the fiery 
showers with which the earth is periodically greeted. One 
of their number, who happily, and not unworthily, bears the 
name of Kewton, has just given to the world an acute and 
learned memoir, reaching back through the Arabian to the 
more ancient histories of the heavens, in which he demon- 
strates the orbit of this meteoric group, and its mathemati- 



11 



cal relations to tlie pathway of the earth, and points out with the 
certainty of scientific vision the Very year, now near at hand, in 
which our planet, in its regular course, must again push its way 
through these celestial deh'is, the wreck perchance of other 
worlds. 

"Nov does the interest of our College in celestial afiairs stop 
even here. Our Scientific School, — ofispring of the munificence 
of Sheffield, largely aided by the State, and now an integral 
portion of the College, — not content with developing the metals 
in the earth below, is now busily pursuing them in the heavens 
above; carefully following in the track of Kirchhof and 
BuNSEN in those brilliant optical researches which have pene- 
trated the vast, billowy efiulgence of the sun itself. The skilful 
analysis of these European observers has already detected in the 
solar mass, more than twelve of the metals known on earth. 
Strange and sad to say, no trace of gold or silver has yet been 
found in that heavenly body, a fact remarkably akin to some of 
the financial theories of the present hour. 

But let us descend to earth, for there we shall find the crown^ 
ing scientific achievement of our College, in upholding and dis- 
playing the gigantic scroll of the vast bygone ages of the planet 
We inhabit. In 1814 we left these walls under the belief that 
the world was just 5818 years of age, and no more. In 1810, 
when we entered the College, Benjamin Silliman was in the early 
bloom of that noble manhood which has since borne fruits of 
such surpassing excellence. He had but recently returned from 
Europe, where he had gone to study with the ablest masters, the 
structure and history of the earth. The field was new and 
nearly untrodden ; but in Edinburgh he had come in contact with 
fellow laborers, whose vigorous genius was grappling in the early 
tnorning light, with a gigantic cosmogonyj just becoming dimly 
visible. The investigation required, at the threshold, a calm and 
careful inquiry) whether the " days " of the Genesis, as recorded 



12 



by Moses, were necessarily limited to six diurnal revolutions of 
the earth on its axis, or could be fairly enlarged to embrace six 
great cosmical intervals of time. A devout Christian inquirer, 
like SiLLiMAN, immovably convinced of the truth of the Ploly 
Scriptures, could not, and would not decide such a question 
without long and conscientious study, and above all, the fullest 
examination of the facts. 

The two contending theories, at that time struggling for 
mastery, were the aqueous, or that of Werner, who attributed 
the structure and present condition of the earth wholly to the 
agency of water ; and the igneous, or that of Hu'iton, " who 
" had no faith in water, and was for fire alone." The struggle 
has been graphically and characteristically depicted by Dana, 
our highest geological authority, " as when fire and water were 
" in violent conflict when the earth itself was evolved from 
" chaos," so, out of the conflict at Edinburgh, " emerged the 
" noble science of geology." 

Amono; the liveliest and most cherished memories of our 
Class of 1814, there can be none more clear and vivid than 
those splendid and most attractive lectures we heard from 
SiLLBiAN ; but I am confident that all of us now present will 
unite in declaring that, up to 1814, he had pronounced no 
definite decision on the two contending geological theories. 
He may have stated to the Class, in general terms, the Hut* 
tonian, or igneous theory, but it must have been with little 
explanation or amplification, and with no adequate exhibition of 
facts to sustain it. We certainly left the College under the rev» 
erent belief then universally prevalent in the religious world, that 
the deluge of J^oah had been the principal, if not the only, 
agent in stamping upon the earth its present physiognomy. 

It was not until 1819, that the Professor published the first 
number of his " American Journal of Science," a work which 
has now successfully reached its forty-fifth year, and is read 



13 



witli interest and instruction in every portion of tlie civilized 
world. Among its other excellences, it serves to furnish a series 
of land-marks, which chronologically show the progress of the 
human mind in the last fifty years, including that of the editor 
himself, on the subject of geology. The very introduction to 
the opening number distinctly marks the first advance, in claim- 
ing for geology the rank of " an inductive science, the result 
" not of theory or of baseless speculations on the origin of the 
"globe, but of actual exploration and examination of the 
" structure, arrangement and materials of which it is com- 
" posed." But that opening number contained a passage still 
more significant, in which the editor, after gratefully acknowl- 
edging the obligations which geological science would ever owe 
to Wernee, quite ominously adds : " but his pupils should not 
" now demand the implicit and unqualified adoption of all his 
" opinions." 

Within twenty years from that date, we find the Journal 
not only demonstrating with great force of evidence, the potent 
and wide-spread agency of internal fire in upheaving, fracturing 
and contorting the existing crust of the globe, elevating con- 
tinents and dispersing oceans, — but bringing out to light an 
astonishing array of fossil witnesses, disentombed by the energy 
and skill of scientific inquirers, conclusively proving the pre- 
Adamite existence of vast races and series of races of animals, 
aquatic and terrestrial, which had successively flourished through 
countless ages, after our planet had sufficiently cooled from 
the incandescent state in which it was evolved from original 
chaos. 

Kay, more, the Journal soon afterwards annoimced to its 
awe=struck readers that there was a period, and that not very 
remote, geologically speaking, " when the earth was peopled by 
" oviparous quadrupeds of a most appalling magnitude,^'' and 
further, and in the same sharp italics, " that gigantic reptiles 



u 



" were the Lords of the creation ! before the existence of the human 
"race." A brief statement of the size, form and features of the 
interesting creatures thus enjoying this elevated rank in tlie 
history of the world, may not be wholly out of place, even if it 
should cause our present potentates and statesmen, the Napo- 
leons and Alexanders, the Palmerstons and Sewards, of these 
latter days, to hide their diminished heads. Be it known, then, 
to the j)olitical world, that the Ichthyosaurus was a fish-like lizard 
about thirty feet loug, with a head four feet in diameter, enor- 
mous eyes, a short neck, and a very long tail, and furnished with 
four broad and flat paddles. The Pterodactyle was an enormous 
flying creature, having the structure of a reptile with the 
wings of a bat, jaws furnished with sharp teeth, and claws with 
long hooked nails. The Iguanadon, a herbivorous reptile, had 
huge teeth like the incisors of a rhinoceros, with warts or horns 
on its snout, and was nine or ten feet high, and from sixty 
to a hundred feet long. Such was a portion of " the best 
society " of that dominant, pre-Adamite race, introduced to the 
American world by the " Journal of Science," at New Haven, 
in January, 1832. 

The fossil remains of these defunct monsters had been found 
principally in portions of Europe, buried, I believe, in the 
chalk, but it was not long before the vigilance of American 
explorers detected the footprints of gigantic pre-Adamite birds 
at least fourteen feet high, clearly stamped on the margin 
of the Connecticut river. Subsequent publications in the 
" Journal " depicted the magnitude and the splendor of the 
pre-Adamite fiora^ attaining enormous size during " the heated 
term " in our cosmical history, and far exceeding in what are 
now the coldest portions of the globe, the tropical products 
of the present era. Its providential uses in furnishing the raw 
material for the immense, carboniferous deposits which have 
since become so necessary to Man, as the ultimate lord of the 



15 



earth, are displayed in that glowing and attractive style which 
our venerable and gifted friend has always at command. 

It cannot be surprising that the presentation of facts and ideas 
so gigantic, should cause some little commotion, especially in 
narrow minds. In behalf of the State of New York, I must, 
however, claim, that she came at once fully up to the magnitude 
of the subject. In 183G, her Legislature directed a geological, 
zoological and botanical survey to be made of the State, for 
which she then appropriated $104,000 ; which liberal amount 
has been since increased to nearly a million by the enlightened 
efforts of friends of science in the State Government, among 
whom we are proud to number General Leaven woeth, an hon 
ored alumnus of Yale, now present and presiding over our 
meeting. 

The original bill of 183G passed the lower House unani- 
mously. The few opposing votes in the Senate do not morally 
diminish the lustre of that legislative act, being mostly given by 
disciples of the political school (in the mercy of God now nearly 
extinct), which holds that Government has no right to foster 
science, or colleges, or schools, or charities, or to build light- 
houses, or canals, or roads, or any other public work whatever, of 
a beneficent or civilizing character. Nor did the Legislature 
pass the act in ignorance of its high scientific aims, or merely 
for utilitarian or economical objects. On the contrary, $26,000 
of the appropriation was expressly inserted and retained for 
zoological and botanical examinations, upon the earnest re- 
commendation of the Secretary of State (General Dix), whose 
elaborate and interesting report to the Assembly expressly 
referred to the extinct species of the former geological ages, and, 
M'hat must greatly delight New England, distinctly specified 
a ^''Gorgonia! of an undescribed species, found on the Connect- 
" icut River, and proving, with other analagous facts, that its 
"valley had once constituted, and for an immense period, tbe 
' bottom of a tropical ocean." 



16 



The scientific truths thus unfolded to the world were so 
largely in advance of the ideas of the Genesis which our theolo- 
gians had generally adopted, that their successful establishment 
required the best and most active exertion of Silliman's intel- 
lectual powers. Far be it from me to dig up or bring back to 
light the dull, dense mass of ignorance and bigotry which he was 
compelled to encounter. Whenever the time shall come (far dis- 
tant be the day) when the biographer shall sum up the whole of 
his long and well-spent life, a curious and instructive chapter will 
certainly be added to the history of science and its struggles. 
Like Aristotle of old, who could not be confined to any " pent-up" 
Attica, but carried science into Egypt and far distant Asia, 
SiLLiMAN made our whole continental republic his field of action, 
traveling from Boston to Savannah, from Quebec to New Or- 
leans, and up the Mississippi and its confluents, ever holding 
aloft the torch of science, and shedding its light upon thousands 
and tens of thousands of delighted listeners. With his im- 
mense and iwesistible array of facts, compelling the acquiescence 
of the judgment, he came, he spoke, he conquered. The 
majestic ideas which he thus disseminated, elevated and en- 
larged the intellectual vision of the whole American people. It 
is doubtless well to applaud the statesman whose annexations 
of territory extended our political domain from ocean to 
ocean, but where can we find words to thank the apostle of 
geology, who annexed to our intellectual domain the transcend- 
ant knowledge that the planet we inhabit occupies no narrow 
" inch of time," no petty segment of six thousand years, but is 
the sublime continuation and prolongation of a pre-existing 
creation, embracing a succession of innumerable ages, beyond 
the power of human arithmetic to measure. The highest figures 
of ascertained astronomical distances have been invoked, in vain, 
to define the extent of those immense geological periods. By a 
stupendous analogy, the smaller subdivisions of the strata of the 



17 



earth have been likened to the hundreds ofmiUions of miles 
which separate the planetary orbits, but the vast chronology of 
its grand divisions has only found a parallel in the immeasur- 
able abyss of the stellar spaces. Looking back on such a field 
of scientific triumph, do we not find our great geologist occupy- 
ing largely the academic era which we now commemorate ? 
Does he not stand out prominent and lofty, in the historic 
picture we seek to paint ? 

I have already ventured to assert that in every wisely man- 
aged college, science and theology will be blended in due pro- 
portion, and that in this respect, the authorities of Yale have 
been singularly successful. The labors of Silliman, so far 
from weakening, have materially strengthened our faith in 
the inspiration of the Mosaic record. The flood of light 
which geology has shed on the cosmical " days " of the 
Genesis, has immeasurably widened the basis of our belief. 
By removing in all rational minds every apparent antagonism 
between Science and the Bible, it has practically established 
a Concordat w*ith all the Churches, reverently assigning to 
theology all the spiritual portion of Man's complex nature, 
and committing to science only the lower and inferior office of 
discovering and declaring the physical laws and history of the 
material universe which he temporarily inhabits. So lively 
however, is the perception of the comparative progress of 
the geological eras thus established, that Dana, in his admirable 
and exhaustive " Manual of Geology," complains, with some- 
what of American impatience, that " the earth dragged slowly 
through its early stages /" 

I have also said that the College has ever wisely and skilfully 
mingled science and letters, as elements of education. For one, 
I can never admit that the truths of physical science are useful 
only foi* information, and not for culture. On the contrary, I 
insist that they train, invigorate and " educate" the mind, and 
3 



18 



lead it onward and upward to its noblest and highest capacities. 
Fully admitting the purifying and refining powder of tlie classics 
in chastening the taste and filling the imagination with im- 
mortal forms of beauty, and fully recognizing the condensed, 
chrystalline and sharply sculptured diction they impart, as 
furnishing the only fitting drapery in which to clothe the sublime 
imagery which science brings to light, I yet contend that every 
faculty of the head and heart is educated and elevated to its 
highest pitch by the study and comprehension of the grand gen- 
eralities of Nature. 

The Church, in her magnificent " Te Deum^'' by the adoring 
exclamation, " All the Earth doth worship Thee, the Father 
Everlasting," proclaims her belief in the power of material 
matter to elevate the soul ; as she does in the surpassing grandeur 
of her sublime generalization that Earth and Heaven are " full 
" of the Majesty of His Glory." The joyous exclamation of her 
glorious Canticle, coming down from the daj^s of the Prophets, 
invokes not only " all the Works of God," but " all the Powers," 
(in the original, " all the Power") " of God, to praise and 
" magnify him forever ; " plainly recognizing, in the infinitude 
of His might, the supreme motive power of the universe, sub- 
ordinately working through every portion of created sj^ace, by 
those immutable physical laws, which He established from the 
beginning. 

We are told by Yoltaiee, that the age of Pericles was the 
most refined and truly glorious that ancient history records ; but 
who taught Pericles ? He was the cotemporary and doubt- 
less the personal friend and daily companion of uEschylus, 
Sophocles, and Eueipides, the " Great Tragic Triumvirate ;" 
and also of Phidias, preeminently the heaven-breathing sculptor 
of immortal Greece. But was it from them that Pekicles im- 
bibed his most majestic inspiration ? Was it not from l^ature, 
and the great teacher of Nature ? Was it not from Anaxagoras, 



19 



his ever- honored preceptor, who not only tanght all the physical 
science known to Greece, but who boldly traced its laws np to 
One Supreme Intelligence ? Does not Pltjtaech expressly and 
fully inform us, that it was from Anaxagokas, that the elo- 
quence and the character of Pericles attained that god-like 
elevation for which his admiring countrymen could find no 
epithet short of " Olympian ?" 

You can hardly expect one, condemned by fete to dig only 
in earthly things, to analyse the matchless oratory of this rarest 
and richest specimen of what may be denominated the " com- 
posite" scholar, combining, in perfect harmony, the best and 
purest spirit, both of words and things. The commingled ele- 
ments of strength and grace, which he so finely unites, breathe 
from every word of those soul-stirring and captivating Orations 
transmitted to us by Thucydides, who caught them fresh and 
sparkling from the glowing lips of the great Athenian. They 
typify so truly not only the majestic genius, but the splendid 
personal qualities of Peeicles himself, that we are at a loss to 
know whether it is the orator, or the man we most admire. 
How gloriously do they embody his sublime but fond devotion 
to his beloved Athens ; his exquisite appreciation of her refined 
enjoyments ; his unshaken fortitude amid her direst calamities ; 
his proud disdain of calumny ; his supreme contempt of wealth 
or station, when compared with honor ! It possibly may be, as 
some suppose, that his lovely picture of " the public recreations 
" and sacrifices, which the laws of Athens provide for the mind 
" throughout the year, elegantly performed with a peculiar 
" pomp, the delight of which is a charm that puts melancholy 
" to flight," owed somewhat of its tender tone and delicate 
finish to a female hand ; but who could ever misi ake the 
masculine and impassioned eloquence, which urges on his 
hearers, " to make the daily increasing grandeur of Athens 
" the subject of their constant thoughts, until they should 



20 



" become -wliolly enamored of it," and displays " the means 
" witliin tlieir reacli of rising to supreme dominion, a point 
" pompous beyond poetic visions ! " Is he not laboring to 
arouse not only Athens, but a far off "Western World, from 
unmanly despondency, when he adds : " I see you beyond 
" measure fearful and dejected ; but I loudly aver, that you 
" are greater masters now, both at land and sea — those ne- 
" cessary spheres for carrying on the services of life—than 
" any other power ; and may be greater yet, if so inclined. 
" There is not now a king, there is not a nation in the universal 
" world, able to withstand that navy whicli, even at this junc- 
" ture, you can launch out to sea. Confidence rests not on 
" hope, acting only in uncertainty, but in the sedate determina- 
" tion of what it is able to perform. We want no Homer to 
" herald our praise, no poet to deck our history with the charms 
•' of verse. Every sea has been opened b}^ our fleets, and every 
" land has been penetrated by our armies, leaving behind them 
" eternal monuments of our power to befriend or to punish." 
Gently changing his tone, how consolatory, yet how lofty is the 
well-timed compliment which he pays, in the Funeral Oration, 
to his aged auditors bereft of their possessions by the disasters 
of the war, in his noble and characteristic utterance — " it is not 
" the love of gain or of wealth, but of honor, in which old age 
" most delights ; for only greatness of soul is immortal." 

I confess that I love to dwell upon the character and the elo- 
quence of the great patriot and orator of Athens, and all the 
more, that they so vividly recall the majestic memory of our 
great American statesman, now gone to his rest, but who in life, 
like Pericles, was " wliolly enamored" of his country's glory. 
A merciful Providence has spared him the unutterable anguish 
of beholding that dark abyss of sin and folly, upon which 
he so earnestly prayed that his eyes might never gaze. Mr. 
Webstee loved to meditate upon the majestic structure, and 



21 



the possible destiny of the American Union. His "Olym- 
pian" soul, like that of Peeicles, had been educated and ex- 
alted by the study of nature and nature's laws, from which 
exhaustless fountain he drew analogies worthy of liis mighty 
mind. A friend recollects him walkins:, near midnight, around 
the Capitol. Their conversation turned upon the possible 
dangers to the American Eepublic from an nndue extension 
of its geographical limits. Turning his face up to the starry 
firmament, which shone reflected in his deep cavernous eyes, he 
solemnly asked, " Did the discovery of jS'eptune, impair the sta- 
bility of the solar system ?" Do not the scene and the man re- 
produce the portrait, which Ovid had painted eighteen centuries 
before — 

Os... sublime dedit, coeliimque tueri...? 

Even his pleasantry, on that occasion, was somewhat colossal 
and elephantine. Aifectionately throwing his arm around his 
friend, at parting, he said, in his large and grandly cordial way, 
" Come down to Washington, and come often. I want none of 
" your short-legged sixty day fellows about me, with their three 
" days' grace. I want men, — long-legged men, — who go striding 
" down the century, like those pre-Adamite birds in the old 
" Connecticut Yalley !" 

But we must hurry away from Pericles and Webster. We 
must get back to our College walls, and our Class of 1814, and 
see what compan}^ we kept in our Olympiad. 

What then were the surrounding accessories, and what the 
immediate antecedents, which gave to our Class its form and 
features ? 

Historically and chronologically speaking, nearly all of our 
number were born shortly after the foundation of our present 
National Government. All of us lived in the atmosphere 
breathed by Washington. Many of our number first saw the 



22 



light during tlie French Revolution, amid the horrors of the Reign 
of Terror. When the good king, Louis the Sixteenth, the friend 
of American independence, was beheaded, some of the Class were 
old enough to hear the widespread groan, coming heavily across 
the Atlantic. While at school we heard the shouts of the victors 
at Aboukir and Trafalgar. We followed on our maps, " the Lit- 
tle Corporal" from Lodi to Marengo, to Jena and to Austerlitz. 

In the year 1810, when we entered college, the French Em- 
peror had reached the summit, the very culminating point of his 
victorious career. He stood preeminent and aloft, at once the 
dominant power and the terror of the world. Europe was ring- 
ing with the crash of its ancient thrones, and he was rebuilding 
on their ruins the Western Roman Empire of Charlemagne, and 
ambitiously imitating that of Augustus. A Senatus Considtum 
of the Legislative Assembly of the Empire, at Paris, in 1810, pre- 
ceded by a glowing exordium from Regnault de St. J ean d' An- 
gely, in its own official language, " unites to the French Empire 
" the city of Rome, the ancient patrimony of the Ctesars and 
" of Charlemagne ; joins parts of the Roman Empire, v>'hich have 
" long been separated ; and establishes an alliance between the 
" Tiber and the Seine, between Paris and Rome. In a short 
" period, beyond the Pyrenees, the ports of Spain," so prophecies 
the document, " shall be opened to our arms and closed to Eng- 
" land. The peace of Europe from that moment will be secured 
" by the sanctity of treaties, the extent of^ower, the uniformity 
" of interests, and the superiority of genius !" Such was the 
legal form of the imperial process of European consolidation. 

Its details had been already partially carried out. The 
pre-existing legal "Departments of France" had been ex- 
tended eastward to the Elbe, and southward to the northern 
boundary of Naples, thereby formally absorbing and converting 
into integral portions of France, all the territories of Holland, 
Flanders, the Free Hanseatic Cities, and of Italy north of Na- 



23 



pies, including the ancient Republic of Venice. The adjacent 
territories in Kaples, Spain and part of Germany, had been 
erected into French monarchies, ruled by relatives of the 
Emperor, and subject to change, at any moment, at his single 
will. Politically speaking, the Rhine, the Weser, and the Elbe 
"were no longer German rivers. The Zuyder-Zee ceased to be 
Duteli. The Alps and the Appennines became mountains 
of France, while Vesuvius was transmuted by the fiery Con- 
queror into a French volcano, and ^tna was only saved by 
the naval force of England from the gras]) of his lieutenant. 

JS^apoleon was married, in 1810, to Maria Louisa, of the House 
of Austria, an event by w^hich " France," in the ecstatic lan- 
guage of the Legislative Assembly, " was intoxicated with joy 
" and transported with love 1" It was but the prelude to his 
plan of universal dominion. Their child, when born, amid the 
unbounded acclamations of Paris, was formally created " King 
of Rome" ; the " Csesar" to the French Augustus. 

Li 1812, an army of five hundred thousand men, composed 
of levies from France and all the conquered nations, and glitter- 
ing with all the pomp and circumstance of modern war, was led 
by this Agamemnon, this " King of Kings," to the Niemen, 
to conquer and destroy the Empire of Russia. The mighty array 
filled the whole world, not excepting England, with terror 
and dismay. 

Tlie historian Alison, whose English partialities no one will 
doubt, reviewing the state of the world at that eventful period, 
states that " the power of Napoleon appeared to be too great to 
" be w^ithstood by any human efiibrt ; and even the strongest 
" heads could anticipate no other issue from the war than the 
" final prostration of Russia, the conquest of Turkey, and the 
" establishment of French supremacy from the English Channel 
" to the Black Sea." " A general despair seized the minds of 
" men : it seemed doubtful if even the British navy in the end 



24 



" could secure the independence of their favored isle, and the 
" general subjugation of the civilized world was anticipated, 
" probably to be rescued from slavery only by a fresh deluge of 
" northern barbarians." 

The belief that the mighty Conqueror was destined to uni- 
versal dominion, was not confined to Europe, but largely filled 
the American mind. His progress seemed so irresistible, that 
the question was asked in all quarters, how soon he would 
attempt to add the Western World to his conquests. It was 
even made a theme for school exercises by boys of tender age ; 
for I find, among my own preposterous juvenilities, that I was 
set the task, by the village schoolmaster, of discussing, at the 
sapient age of ten years, in a written " Dispute" with an oppo- 
nent but little older than myself, (who has since become the 
President of one of our best American Colleges) the remarkably 
modest question : " If Bonaparte conquers England, can he 
conquer America ?" 

In 1812, by which time our Class had become " Sophomores," 
the alarm had risen to such a pitch, that it was quite seriously 
contended by many worthy people, that J^apoleon differed very 
little, in name or in fact, from " Apollyon." All of us will 
surely recollect the remarkable Essay which, in that year, went 
the rounds of the newspapers, seeking to show from Scripture the 
imperial usurper to be identical with, or twin brother of " the 
" great red dragon" of the Revelations, which rather startling 
proposition the writer strove to support by the coincidence of 
the seventeen letters composing "I^apoleon Bonaparte" with 
the aggregate number of the " seven heads and ten horns," not 
to mention the "seven crowns," of his celestial counterpart. 

The only European Power which had been able to resist the 
progress of the Conqueror, was the United Kingdom of the Brit- 
ish Islands, briefly denominated "England." Her insular 
position, and the splendid naval victories of her heroic KelsoNj 



25 



liad effectually secured her supremacy on tlie ocean ; but they 
drove I^apoleon in his turn, to enforce on the land his celebrated 
" Continental System," interdicting throughout the European 
continent every species of commerce with the British Islands, 
and by a singular legal fiction, declaring them to be " in a state 
of blockade." As the necessary legal consequence, he claimed 
the belligerent right to "burn, sink, and destroy" every neutral 
vessel trading with England, or carrying its products or prop- 
erty. This brought on the English " Orders in Council," in re- 
taliation ; so that the commerce of the United States on the ocean 
soon fell a prey to the two belligerents, who agreed in nothing 
but t^lair undisguised contempt for our young Republic. The 
whole ocean was lighted by the flames of our burning vessels, 
destroyed without stint or mercy, while England superadded 
the further outrage and indignity, of impressing into her navy 
our American seamen by thousands. By the year 1810, our 
maritime commerce was virtually annihilated, and the only 
question was, which of the two great ocean robbers we should 
first attack. 

Tiie effects of that question in forming the political character of 
the Class of 1814, will require a brief review of the origin and dis- 
tinctive features of the two great parties, which had more or less 
divided the country from the foundation of the government. 

The Constitution ^vas the work of Washington, aided largely 
by Hamilton and his associates. The character of that school of 
political thinkers was essentially English and practical. In 
erecting our political structure, they naturally sought to con- 
struct a machine which would not only steadily run without in- 
terruption, but would fully provide for its own preservation* 
With that view, they created and established, as they sup- 
posed, a political " Union," a unit, undivided and indivisible, 
absolutely supreme and sovereign within the limits prescribed 
by the Constitution^ with a judicial tribunal of its own creation, 



26 



clothed with full, and final, and exclusive power to define those 
limits. 

The opposing political school was that of Jefferson, denomi- 
nated j^a^/' excellence by his admirers the " Apostle of Freedom," 
and by others the " Apostle of Eevolution." The character of 
his school, if not altogether French, was decidedly theoretical 
and revolutionary ; for it holds, tliat the Government of the 
Union, created by the Constitution, is, after all, practically only 
a " Confederacy," in which each of the confederating parties re- 
tains an nltimate, independent " sovereignty," with the power at 
any time, in its own discretion and upon its own separate judg- 
ment, without appeal, to nullify any act of the general govern- 
ment; a theory establishing, as the logical and inevitable result, 
the lawful right of any State to resist and overthrow the " N'ation" 
and the paramount national sovereignty, which Washington 
and his supporters thought they had called into being. 

The utter antagonism between these opposing theories was 
not immediately apparent in any practical results, but is now 
painfully manifest in the pending Kebellion. Without trespass- 
ing on any party topics, it may be safely affirmed, that per- 
manent peace never will, and never can be re-established on this 
American continent, until the conflict of those theories shall be 
eifectually ended. The question admits of no compromise ; for 
it is as morally certain as any fixed law of Kature, that if a 
single spark of " State Sovereignty," containing within itself the 
element of lawful " secession," shall be left to smoulder in the 
framework of the Government, the revolutionary flame may be 
at any time rekindled, and with redoubled fury.^ 



* The American "Union" became a " Naiio7i" by the necessary political 
operation of the Constitution, which conferred upon it paramount and trans- 
cendent sovereignty over the great national subjects of war, treaties, money, com- 
merce, the post, Ac, &c., distinctly specified in the Constitution, Precisely to 
the same extent, the Constitution extinguished or abridged the pre-existing " sover- 



27 



The fundamental difference on tliis vital point, gave its tone 
to the two political parties at an earlj stage of our history. It 
soon became evident that Mr. Jefferson and his adherents sym- 
pathized much more fully and sincerely with the revolution- 
ary movements in France, overthrowing its former institu- 
tions, political and religious, — than with the Government of 
England, which upheld a monarchy with Christianity and an 
Established Church. On the other hand, the disciples of Wash- 
ington and Hamilton, who largely predominated in Kew York 
and in 'New England, preferred, as between the two belligerents, 
England to France. 

Such were the political accessories surrounding the College 
in 1810 ; but within its walls, there was a noble and command- 
ing figure, deeply impressing its image upon our Class during 
the whole four years of our academic life. For who of us 
can ever forget the teachings of President Dwigiit ? I shall not 
attempt to paint a portrait which the greater artists who have 
preceded me, ha\'e so faithfully and glowingly executed : nor 
to depict the rich, Johnsonian rotundity of his intellect ; the 
noble elevation of his Christian character ; his penetrating know- 
ledge of the human heart ; the lofty dignity of his carriage and 
example. I shall speak of him only as a politician ; as the 
perfect type of the grand, old Federalist of the better days 
of the Republic : the lover of law, of justice, of order, of regu- 

eignty" of the separate States, -whieh simply retained the residue, or residuum, not 
granted to the Union. Certain legal powers may be concurrent, but " sovereignty' 
from its very nature, must be exclusive. The national sovereignty of the Union, 
within the limits specified by the Constitution, is necessarily exclusive and su- 
preme. The only sovereignty the States can possibly possess, is a " residuary 
sovereignty" beyond those limits, which are to be ascertained and defined only by 
the national judiciary provided by the Constitution. 

The Articles of Confederation, of 1778, commence by denominating the United 
States of America a " Confederacy." The second Article distinctly and carefully 
reserves to each State, " its sovereigntif, freedom and indepe?idence." No such 
denomination or reservation, nor any clause of similar import, is contained in the 
Constitution, — which was expressly and avowedly framed to remedy the manifold 
evils of the Confederation, by establishing a " Union," with a Government partly 



2S 



lated liberty ; the friend and companion of Washington ; the 
firm upholder of the American Union in all its sovereign powers ; 
the " faithful soldier and servant of Christ nuto his life's end." 

The soothing hand of time, in fifty years, has softened and re- 
moved many political prejudices, which stood forth so sharp and 
salient fifty years ago ; for no one conld possibly mistake the 
political opinions of President Dwigiit in 1810, If I were to 
select any one characteristic which would paint his political 
portrait at a single stroke, it would be, not merely his disappro- 
bation, but his utter abomination of Kapoleon Bonaparte and 
Thomas Jefferson. He took no pains to conceal it, but during 
the whole four years of our college course, strenuously labored, 
both in and out of the lecture room, — in and out of the pulpit, — to 
impress upon his pupils his own solemn and deep-seated convic- 
tions. Who of us can ever forget those tremendous sermons 
from the text, " Watchman, what of the night ?" delivered on 
the days of the National Fast ; or the unmitigated indignation 
with which he denounced the French Tlevolution and the tyranny 
of Xapoleon ? 

The Government had declared war against England in June, 
1812, about a week after the arrival of the army of Napoleon 
on the ISTiemen, It was a just and necessary Avar ; for of the 
two great spoliators of our commerce, England only was acces- 
sible to our attack ; but it did not blind the eyes of thoughtful 
men to the gigantic danger to the freedom of the world, from the 

federal and partly national in structure, but exclusively national in its specified 
powers. 

The official letter of Washington, as President of the Convention, sent forth with 
the Constitution, in 1787, distinctly declared it to be " impracticable in the federal 
" government of these States, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to 
" each, and to provide for the interest and safety of all." 

The foreign writers who honestly speak of the Union as a " Confederacy," must do 
so in ignorance of the Constitution. At home, the term is so applied by juggling, 
party politicians, who wish to " play fast and loose,"— to appear to be upholding 
at the same moment, tlie legitimate sovereignty of the Union and a directly antag- 
onist sovereignty in the separate States, 



29 



victorious career of France. In that view President Dwight 
taught us to rejoice, and most of us did rejoice, at every step in 
that mighty struggle, which terminated in 1814, with the down- 
fall of ITapoleon — at the noble patriotism of the Russian 
Emperor; the magnificent sacrifice of Moscow; the tremendous 
" Battle of the JSTations," the Ydlker-Schlacht of Leipsic ; the 
final capture of Paris and the restoration of the Bourbons. 
Subsequent events may have materially modified the views we 
then took of that great event, but the Class left the College in 
181-i almost unanimously rejoicing that " the Tyrant," as we 
were taught to think him, had ceased to be the terror of the 
human race. 

ISTay more ; although we were at war with England, capturing 
her frigates on the ocean, and her fleets on our northern lakes, 
we rejoiced at every step in her gallant defence of the freedom 
of the world on the Spanish Peninsula, and gladly followed the 
victorious career of Wellington from his narrow foot-hold in Por- 
tugal, in 1810, to his triumphant entry into Paris, in 1814; 
covering almost precisely the four years of our College life. Eng- 
lish in descent, in language, in literature, in religion, we gave our 
hearts wholly to England in that terrible struggle. How has 
England repaid us ? Where have been her sympathies when 
we, too, were fighting for the freedom of a Continent ? We 
leave the " Alabama,^'' built of English oak, with English gold, 
manned by English sailors, and sent down headlong with her 
English cannon to the bottom of the English Channel, to tell 
the story. * 

4 It is a singular fact, that the most bitter enemies of the American Union in 
England are found among the Tory party, upon -whom we lavished our sym- 
pathies in their contest with the first Napoleon ; while our most efficient and 
valued friends, such as Cobdex, Bright, Forster, Lefevre, Mill, Goldwin Smith 
and others, are " Liberals," who regard the political reforms and revolutions of 
modern days, in a much more philosophic spirit. Some of the Tories, in their 
speeches and published writings, recommend a division of the United States, into 
four parts, to begin with ; while others express their opinion, that six would be 
a better number, — especially for England. 



30 



It would be a great mistake to suppose, that the malignity 
towards America, which the London Times now exhibits, is a 
feeling of recent origin. On the contrary, its editorial course 
for the last fifty years has been quite consistent, reaching back 
even to our College era. On the twentieth of April, ISl-i, Ka- 
poleon abdicated the throne of France, and went into exile at 
Elba, Peace between France and England immediately fol- 
lowed, and was formally proclaimed on the ITth of May fol- 
lowing. On the 20th of May, the London Times expressed the 
hope that " the Genevese democrat Gallatin, or the famous ora- 
" tor Clay," who had gone out to Europe to negotiate a peace 
between America and England, " will be no more listened to 
" now than when they so earnestly pleaded the cause of the 
" monster Bonaparte." It expressed the further hope, that " the 
" British negotiators will not discuss the impudent no7isense, 
" called an American doctrine, ahout impressment and native 
''^allegiance, but will demand the safe and lindimded possession 
" of the Lakes, the abandonment of the Newfoundland Fish- 
" ery, and the restoration of Louisiana and the usurped terri- 
'"'' tory of Florida P'' To insure the accomplishment of these 
peculiarly British objects, the Times further recommended that 
a large detachment from the victorious army of Wellington, 
then in the south of France, should be sent out at once to 
America. 

The British Government attempted to follow this precious 
advice, but was slightly unsuccessful. By some accident. Com- 
modore Macdonough, on the 11th of September, 1811:, swept 
the whole British fleet out of Lake Champlain. By another 
accident, on the 8th of January following. General Jackson 
evicted from the soil of Louisiana every veteran of Wellington's 
army who had ventured to cross the Atlantic. 

It is a curious coincidence, and one which serves quite accur- 
ately to define the chronology of our academic life, in connec- 



31 



tiou with cotemporaiy events, tliat tlie news of MACDONOuan's 
victory readied N^ew Haven on the Commencement Day of the 
College, in September, 1814, and almost within the very hour 
in which our Class was receiving its Bachelor's Degree ; and 
that one of our number, whose route homeward happened to 
pass through Middletown, had tlie liappiness of carrying the 
joyful intelligence to the family of the gallant Commodore. 
The completeness of his triumph so effectually stopped the 
" impudent nonsense " of the Tunes about " the undivided pos- 
" session of the Lakes," that the British negotiators consented 
to sign the Treaty of Peace, on the 24th of December, 1814. 
Let us hope that the good sense, if not the good feeling, 
of England may induce her to do no further act to disturb 
it. 

Kapoleon was then quietly in exile in Elba. On his way 
there, in April, in a British frigate, he told the captain that he 
" had intended to give the Americans a good government, but 
" that they were unworthy of it !" to which assumption, and to 
that of every other European Sovereign, Avhether on or off his 
throne, America may simply answer in the words of the noble 
Peruvian : " "We seek no change ; and least of all, such change 
as they would bring us," 

The middle ground of our picture, embracing the Golden 
Age of general peace, filled with the victories of Man over 
Katiire, and reaching from 1814 to 1860, now lies broadly 
spread before us. The fiery form of Kapoleon is once more 
seen in the distance, flitting across the " Hundred Days," in 
which he strove to burst his bonds and recover the throne he 
had abdicated ; for wdiich offence he was chained, like Pro- 
metheus, to a rock for the femnant of his life. He lingered 
long enough, while the vulture was gnawing at his vitals, 
for the world to look back more calmly on his eventful and 
chequered career. "We began to perceive that, after all. 



32 



the imperious but imperial Euler bad done some little good to 
France, and perliaps to the world, particularly in bis civic ad- 
ministration in simplifying tbe law, introducing sound finance 
with a metallic basis, promoting scientific discovery, and emi- 
nently in tbe great public works, by wbicb be strengthened 
and adorned bis Empire. On tbe otber band, we discovered 
tbat some of tbe restored monarcbs, in tlieir exile " bad for- 
gotten nothing and had learned nothing," but to do nothing 
for tbe general advancement of civilization and tbe good of 
Man. 

We may take, as a specimen, the immediate suppression in every 
part of Italy, by tbe dozens of fugitive princes, emerging from 
their biding places, of the splendid "Metric System," which had 
been introduced by I^apoleon, and was in general use throughout 
the Italian Peninsula ; and the sudden resurrection, from all its 
nooks and corners, of the obsolete, worm-eaten and widely vary- 
ing weights and measures of the ancien regime^ — not to mention 
the ridiculous restoration of the knee-breeches and wigs, and espe- 
ci ally the queues, ivom. which attenuated "caudal" appendage, 
tbe reactionary party in Italy derived their diminutive or 
sobriqioet, of " codini.^^ The English Tories may have dropped 
tbe queues, but they even yet retain much of tbe genuine spirit 
of the " codini y" for as late as the present year 1864, they re- 
sisted, in Parliament, tbe passage of a bill merely permitting 
the " Metric System" to be used in the United Kingdom ; and 
expressly on the ground tliat it was the off'spring of the French 
Kevolution.5 So far did the returned runaways in Sardinia 
carry the fanatical wish to efface every vestige of ISTapoleon's 
rule, that it was seriously proposed for a time, to destroy the 



* The International Statistical Congress at Berlin, in September, 1863, unani- 
mously passed a resolution, in which the Delegate from the United States actively 
concurred, recommending to the " Inspectors of Schools," of the various nations 
of the civilised world, to introduce the study of the " Metric System," in all 



33 



noble bridge whicli he had erected over the Po at Turin. It was 
onl}^ saved by their unwillingness to pay for building another. 

It w^as my purpose to have grouped together some of the most 
prominent of the great public works whicli have been con- 
structed throughout the world, and especially on this Continent 
during the fifty years just past ; but my fleeting hour is already 
gone, and I must reserve the sketch for some other occasion. I 
confess that I thought it justly due to Clinton and his followers, 
to say something of their aims and their success in seeking to 
establish Lere, in our America, our great " Continental System," 
commenced in 1817, and still in vigorous progress, for reducing 
to the lowest attainable limit, the cost of transporting persons 
and property by land and by watei', through American territory, 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; and in that view, to show 
statistically the marvellous achievements of steam during the 
last fifty years, in augmenting almost incalculably the preexist- 
ing powers, physical and political, of the human race. 

The Steam Engines of England alone are estimated to do the 
work of eighty millions of horses, or four hundred millions of men. 
The increase of force added by steam to Europe and America, in 
the last fifty years, is nearly, if not quite equivalent, to the unaid- 
ed power of one thousand millions of men, thereby virtually doub- 
ling, for dynamical purposes, the whole population of the globe. 
Of this stupendous addition to the forces of our age, the increase 
in our own Republic is equivalent at least to one hundred and 
fifty, if not two hundred, millions of men. Tlie world may 



schools subject to their authority. The schools of the United States, being 
subject exclusively to the government of the separate States, their separate action 
is necessary. The Legislature of Connecticut, in June, 1864, passed a resolution, 
introducing the study into all her schools. 

Between the years 1842 and 1860, Sardinia, in her career of reform, gradually 
retraced her steps; so that the "Metric System" is now legally re-established in 
every part of Italy, except Rome and Venice. 

5 



34 



be less picturesque, but it is certainly more populous than in 
the clays of Solomon ; and we must admit, that for the loco- 
motion of persons and property, a modern railway engine, with 
its train, is somewhat more expeditious and convenient than 
the caravans of camels, used by that eminent sovereign and 
wisest of men, in his overland trade with Mesopotamia, or even 
by the Qneen of Sheba in her royal progress to Jerusalem. The 
present is not the occasion for dry statistics, but I venture to 
aver, and am ready to prove, that the pecuniary gain by the use 
of steam in the United States, in the various branches of human 
industry, at the end of the next ten years, will annually exceed 
five if not tenfold the interest on our national debt ; especially 
if the Government shall meanwhile exert with energy and intel- 
ligence its legitimate powers to render our vast metalliferous in- 
terior, and our young empire, so rapidly rising on the Pacific, 
cheaply and readily accessible. 

It gives me profound satisfaction to recall the fact, that as 
early as 1794, long before steam had been rendered practically 
available for locomotion, either on land or on water, and at 
least ten years before the acquisition of Louisiana, our own clear 
sighted and noble hearted Dwigut, had predicted in glowing 
verse, in his " Greenfield Hill," the construction of " Appian 
"Ways," uniting the Atlantic to the Pacific. The passage may 
be less known and is possibly less poetic than the celebrated 
prophecy of Beekeley, but they breathe a kindred feeling, and 
deserve to stand side by side. 

The efforts of the last fifty years to complete and to improve 
the various links of our great continental chain of canals and 
railways, having among its highest aims the preservation in 
all its vigor of our continental, political Union, have uniformly 
enlisted the cordial support of all the widely scattered graduates 
of Yale, not only in the field, but in the legislative halls, and 
our great commercial cities. Without making any invidious 



S5 



selection, we may gratefully remember tliat our honored alumnus 
James Kent, the distinguished Chancellor of New York, by 
his casting vote in the Council of Eevision, in 1817, saved the 
original bill for constructing the Erie Canal, from defeat by a 
narrow-minded political opposition ; and I surely may be par- 
doned for openly thanking two of our alumni, now here, and at 
my very side,-TALLMADGE, of the Class of 1811, whose genial and 
generous nature, as well as his enlightened judgment, led him 
unfailingly to support the warmly contested measures for the 
Erie Canal Enlargement, during the four years of his service in 
the Senate of Kew York ; — and Daniel Lord, of the Class of 
1814, foremost among the jurists of our great commercial 
metropolis, himself the very type of justice, truth, and patriot- 
ism ; whose friendly and cheering words, at every stage of the 
struggle, will never be forgotten. ^ 

^ The nationality of the effort to complete and perfect our continental system 
of public works, -will appear in the following extract from a report to the Legisla- 
ture of New York, in 1838, urging their high political importance in strengthening 
the national Union : 

" It is not for New York or her sons to ' calculate the value ' of that sacred 
" bond. But if we would catch a glimpse, however imperfect, of the gigantic 
" stake which is depending upon our prudence and patriotism — if we would count 
" the cost of ruined cities and desolated fields,— 'of our lakes and rivers, obstructed 
" by fleets and fortresses in war, and by commercial restrictions still more ce- 
" structive, in peace, — we may contrast Europe as it is, convulsed by centuries of 
" strife, and broken into jarring, disunited and discordant communities, with 
" Europe as it would have been, had its whole population been united, like ours, 
" at the very origin of their governments, under one common law, sjieaking one 
" common language, and bound by one common constitution." 

Our experience in the last three years of the calamities of intestine war, witli 
" fleets and fortresses," and large contending armies on our wide spread and lately 
peaceful waters, affords a melancholy proof that the passage above quoted did 
not over-estimate the miseries and horrors of a broken and dismembered Union. 
Unless the sovereign authority of the Government shall be fully restored, wo 
shall need no picture of " Europe as it is," and " Europe as it would have been," — 
but may find ample instruction in the contrast at home, between " America as it 
is," and "America as it was." 

It is idle to hope for a peaceful dissolution or division of tlie American Union. 
The structure must either be preserved entire, or it v/ill break into fragments as 
numerous as the debris of the Western Roman Empire in Italy and Germany, 
which the efforts of fourteen hundred years have not yet succeeded in reuniting. 



3G 



It gives me lieartfelt pleasure to remember, and now to ac- 
knowledge, that tlie "Mathematics and ISTatnral Philosophy" 
needed in these efforts to serve the country, involving the 
fundamental question of adequately meeting "stress" by 
" strength,"" — the true secret of all well directed effort, — were ac- 
curately and thoroughly taught to the Class of 1814 by Professor 
Day, afterwards the honored President of the College. Through 
a kindly Providence, that most venerable preceptor still survives, 
and is here to-day, in a very advanced but green old age, to cheer 
us with his benignant smile and countenance. His sun is slowly, 
calmly setting amid golden clouds, the harbingers of that 
brighter world, ready, in God's good time, to receive one so 
pure, so just, so gentle, so fully ripe for Heaven. 

Among the memorable events of the last fifty years, I liad 
also intended briefly to speak of the brilliant triumphs of 
electricity, in diffusing instantaneous intelligence among the 
wide spread nations of the globe; of our own alumnus, 
Morse, whose scientific labors in this magnificent field of action, 
have done so much to elevate and equalize the condition of 
men and nations ; of Sibley, whose matchless energy, in re- 
sponse to an invitation from the Emperor of Russia to " meet 
him half way," laid down in little over four months, a tele- 
graphic line more than two thousand miles long, from the 
Missouri to the Pacific ; of Field, whose indomitable persever- 
ance is sounding and yanquishing the deepest depths of the 
Atlantic; of Peeey Macdonougii Collins, the civic hero 
appropriately bearing the names of the two victors of the 
Lakes, and now on his way to Behring's Straits to lay beneath 
the Polar circle his telegraphic wire, inter-continentally uniting 
the American Republic with all the civilization, ancient and 
modern, of the Older World. 

The picture of our fifty years would be singularly incomplete 
were it to omit Louis Napoleon, that " mysterious and inscruta- 
ble " sovereign, who mainly governs Prance by governing him- 
self, and preeminently the most commanding object within our 



37 



field of view, at tlie present lionr. Whatever ultimate designs 
he may entertain in respect to America, and how mnch soever 
we may reprobate his manner of reaching the throne, or his 
recent interference with the affiiirs of Mexico, we cannot close 
onr eyes npon the unexampled success of his civil administration. 
He has certainly signalized his reign beyond that of any preced- 
ing ruler of France, by the permanent improvement and splen- 
did embellishment of its cities, the vigorous prosecution of its 
works of inter-communication, the canalization of its rivers, the 
rapid increase of its commerce, and the immense augmentation 
of the pecuniary value of the empire'' ; not to mention his po- 
litical performances in the consolidation of Italy, and the re- 
cent, remarkable extension of the territory and power of France 
over the African coast of the Mediterranean. It may well be, 
that his very characteristic declaration, that " France makes it 
a point of honor! to keep rivers and revolutions in their 



' The value of the real and personal estate of France, authoritatively stated in 
debate in the Corps Lerjulatif, May 7th, 1864, was 249,000 millions of francs, about 
forty-six thousand millions of dollars. In 1852, it was but 124,000 millions of 
francs, showing an increase, in twelve years, of about twenty-tliree thousand miU 
lions of dollars. 

The taxed value of the real and personal property of the United States in 1860, 
was seven thousand one hundred and thirty-five millions of dollars. In 1860, six- 
teen thousand one hundred and fifty-nine millions. Increase in ten years, nine 
thousand and twenty-four millions. During those epochs, the public works of both 
nations were vigorously prosecuted. 

The 9,024 millions. added to the pecuniary value of the United States, in the 
decade fiom 18.50 to 1860, was occasioned largely by the increase of our popula- 
tion, shown by experience for seventy years, to vary very little from 85 per 
cent, for every decade. The increase in the last decade from 23,191,176 to 
01,445,089, (being 8,254,209) compared with the 9,024 millions increase of value, 
^ll(lws a rate of $1,093 (in metallic currency) for each additional inhabitant. 

The increase of population for the present decade from 1860 to 1870, may 
possibly fall somewhat sliort of the previous rate, but will not probably be less 
than ten millions for the whole United States, or seven millions for the loyal 
States. The latter number multiplied by only |800 (in metallic currency) for 
each additional inhabitant, would amount to 5,600 millions of dollars— nearly 
threefold our present national debt. 

All we require is an honest administration of our national resources, — and a 
metallic basis for our national currency. 



38 



proper channels,"' — condensing in a single phrase Lis whole 
policy at home and abroad, — has offended the lovers of the 
largest republican liberty, but every one will recognize his 
noble and comprehensive statesmanship, in seeking so earnestly 
not only to recover and reconstruct the canal of Suez, the 
work of Ptolemy and of Trajan, but to open through the 
central portion of America, by his proposed canal of Nicaragua, 
the way to the East Indies, which Columbus sought in vain to 
discover. 

The fact does not seem to be generally known that Louis 
Kapoleon, while a state prisoner of Louis Philippe, and actually 
immured in the prison of Ham, deliberately signed a contract 
to construct the canal of ]^icaragua to pass vessels of 2,000 
tons from ocean to ocean, and personally to expend on the 
work seventy-five millions of francs. It so hapj)ened that the 
progress of the public works of New York, with which I 
had been officially connected, having been unexpectedly and 
rather rudely stopped, I had gone to Europe ; where my busi- 
ness was, to ascertain whether France and England would join 
the United States in constructins: an inter-oceanic canal 
through the Isthmus of Panama, to be free to all the nations 
of the world, and to be forever consecrated to jDeace. It was 
on the suggestion, and indeed at the request of the Minister 
at Paris from Kicaragua, that I met Louis Napoleon,- in 
London, in 1846, about a month after he had escaped from prison. 
To external observers, he certainly then appeared to be very 
far from the throne of Prance, so that the conversation 
between us was comparatively free and unrestrained, al- 



8 This imperial sentence so far as rivers are concerned, is a French paraphrase 
of Horace's compact description of the Tiber, controlled in its inundations by the 
vigorous arm of Augustus — "doctus iter melius." Every sovereign, ancient or 
modern, dignified by history as " the Great," has regarded the improvement of the 
rivers and the roads of his country, as a duty aud an honor. Alexander the 
Great, died at Babylon, while clearing the Euphrates from obstructions. 



39 



though his manner was at times, just a little imperial. On 
asking him if he thought that his proposed canal would yield an 
adequate revenue on its cost, he answered with a princely air — 
" Perhaps not : but you noio see me out of my true position ; 
" and I must do something worthy of the name I bear." He 
was then writing a pamphlet, in which he fully and very ably 
set forth, not only the commercial but the high political im- 
portance of the proposed inter-oceanic canal. The pamphlet, 
a copy of which, bearing the autograph of the writer, is now 
before me, indicates so clearly the exalted objects which he then 
had in view, and which he has since acquired the power, in 
some degree, to accomplish, that I beg leave to read one or two 
brief extracts. They are of peculiar interest at the present time, 
not only in bringing boldly out the noblest features of the 
golden age of civilization we have just been reviewing, but also 
in manifesting the opinions then entertained by the present 
ruler of France, in respect to the abolition of Slavery, not alone 
in America, but throughout the civilized world. 

" The geographical position of Constantinople," says this now 
im23erial writer, " is such as rendered her the queen of the an- 
cient world ; occupying, as she does, the central point between 
Europe, Asia and Africa, she could become the entrepot 
of the commerce of all these countries, and obtain over them an 
immense preponderance ; for in politics, as in strategy, a central 
position always commands the circumference." 

" This is what the proud city of Constantine could be, 
and this is what she is not, because," as Montesquieu says, 
" God permitted that Turks should exist on earth, a people the 
most fit to possess uselessly a great Empire." 

" There exists in the ISTew World a State as admirably situated 
as Constantinople, and we must say, up to the present time, as 
uselessly occupied / we allude to the State of Nicaragua. As 
Constantinople is the centre of the ancient world, so is the town 
of Leon or rather Massaqua, the centre of the new ; and if 



40 



the tongue of land wMch separates its two lates from the Pacific 
Ocean was cut through, she would command, by her central 
position, the entire coast of iN'orth and South America.. ..The 
State of Nicaragua can become, better than Constantinople, the 
necessary route for the great commerce of the world, and is 
destined to attain to an extraordinary degree of prosperity and 
grandeur." 

" France, England, Holland, Russia and the United States, 
have a great commercial interest in the establishment of a com- 
munication between the two oceans ; but England has, more 
than the other powers, a politiGal interest in the execution of 
this project. England will see with pleasure Central America 
become a flourishing and powerful State, which will establish a 
balance of power, by creating in Spanish America a new centre 
of active enterprise, powerful enough to give rise to a great 
feeling of nationality, and to prevent, hy hacking Mexico^ any 
further encroachment from the Norths'' 

" The prosperity of Central America is connected with the 
interests of civilization at large ; and the best means to promote 
the interests of humanity, is to knock down the barriers which 
separate men, races, and nations. This course is pointed out to 
us by the Christian religion, as well as l)y the efforts of those 
great men who liave at intervals appeared in the world. The 
Christian faith teaches us that %oe are all hrothers, and that 
in the eye of God the Slave is equal to his Master, — as the 
Asiatic, the African, and the Indian are alike equal to the 
European." 

" On the other hand, the great men of the earth have, by their 
wars, commingled the various races of the workl, and left behind 
them some of those imperishable monuments which, in levelling 
mountains, opening forests, canalising rivers, has a tendency to 
upset those obstacles which divide mankind, and to unite men 
in communities, communities in people, people in nations. 
War and commerce have civilized the world. The time for war 
has gone by ; commerce alone pushes its conquests. Let us 
then open to it a new route ; let us approximate the people 
of Oceania and Australia to Europe ; and let us make them 
partakers of the blessings of Christianity and civilization." 



41 



It would not fall within tlie scope of the present Address, 
which seeks to review the men and the sovereigns of the last 
fifty years, not as potentialities, but as historical facts, with 
actual, visible results, to look beyond the present hour, or to 
inquire how far the reigning Emperor of France will probably 
carry into practical effect the enlightened and far-seeing views 
of the " Prisoner of Ham." They now apply not alone to 
Nicaragua, but emphatically to Mexico, as furnishing a more 
accessible and easier route for tlie great interoceanic channel 
which he then regarded as vouchsafing such blessings to all 
mankind, and especially to the colored races held in slavery. 

Louis E'apoleon is a thoughtful student of history, and as 
such, wisely covetous of lasting fame. After announcing his 
purposes, so grandly Christian and philanthropic, — and in full 
view, moreover, of the magnificent example hung high in the 
Heavens by his great compeer in Russia, emancipating at a 
single stroke a population of more than twenty millions — can it 
be possible that he will so disregard the judgment of coming 
ages, as to lend his aid at this late hour, to blacken the Ameri- 
can continent with the blight of African bondage ; still less 
that he will openly uphold and abet the unholy and savage 
effort to establish on the ruins of our young republic, a bar- 
barian power proclaiming slavery as its corner-stone ? 

Louis Napoleon is, moreover, a mathematician profouudly 
Versed in the knowledge of quantities, material and political. 
Will he forget the material and political science practically 
taught by the first Napoleon, in ceding to the American Ee- 
public nearly one-half of its wide-spread continental area, for the 
very purpose of building up in this Western Hemisphere a con- 
tinental power of sufficient weight to preserve the political 
equilibrium of the globe, which the constantly increasing pos- 
sessions of England were disturbing ? 
6 



42 



But we must dwell no longer on these political '* eventuali- 
ties," but come down to the dark and bloody foreground of the 
picture at our feet, filled bj the pending Rebellion. Amid the 
smoke and carnage, it were idle to philosophize, or seek to 
portray even in outlhie its dismal lights and shadows. We 
may, however, select a single feature, and that, too, of a j^acific 
character ; but it will sufficiently depict the whole, in present- 
ing at once and in bold relief, the highest civilization and the 
lowest barbarism of the contending parties. 

The Light-House system of the United States, peculiarly a 
symbol of national sovereignty, attracted the earnest and early 
attention of Washingtox. Almost immediately after his in- 
auguration at ISTew York, as President, he directed the light 
on Sandy Hook, almost within his sight, to be kept burning, 
until Congress should have time to legislate on the subject, 
which they did, shortly afterwards. ^ It soon became apparent 
that "peculiar institutions" of this description found no 
favor with his political opponents, the advocates of " State 
Sovereignty," who utterly denied the right of the general gov- 
ernment to erect a light-house, or any similar structure needed 
by commerce, and especially on the " sacred soil of Yirginia." 
A light-house was nevertheless erected within the first two 
years of the administration of "Washington, on Cape Henry, 
which was so rapidly followed by others along our Atlantic 
front, that by 1814, fifty years ago, more than forty lights were 
standing, as faithful sentinels, to welcome the mariners of the 
world to the coast of the American Union. By the year 1860, 
through the ardent and untiring exertions of our patriotic men of 
science, not only was the illuminating power of our lights 



* The original letter of Washington, giving this direction, is still in existence. 
It is historically important, iu furnishing unanswerable evidence of the cotem- 
poraneous exercise by the highest authority, of the national power committed by 
the Constitution to the Government of the Union, "to regulate commerce with 
foreign nations and among the States." 



43 



increased more than eight-fold, by introducing the beautiful 
and costly Fresnel lenses, — but the total number, including 
beacons, on the coast of the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, 
with the adjacent waters, was increased to three hundred and 
fifty-three, with twenty in addition gladdening our distant 
Pacific shores. ' " That part of the system which encircled the 
large peninsula of Florida was peculiarly brilliant and expensive, 
far beyond the means or the inclination of that feeble and 
sparsely populated State, to erect or uphold; guarding not 
only the coast but the numerous reefs, which, stretching out 
into the ocean, endangered the general commerce of the world 
with the Gulf of Mexico and its numerous islands. 

Will it not be deemed wholly incredible by after ages, that 
any community claiming to be civilized, should be found willing 
to vent its rage on objects of beneficence like these ? When 
the great Smeaton was erecting the Eddystone light, amid the 
fury of the English Channel, the whole world applauded the 
undertaking. The King of France, then at war with England, 
specially directed his naval commanders not to molest or 
retard a work so typical of Christian love. Must we not 
hang our heads in very shame for human nature, when we 
learn, that within three months from the first parricidal attack 
on Sumter, its guilty authors extinguished the whole series of 
lights, — one hundred and twenty-nine in number, — stretching 
around all our Southern coast, from the Capes of Yirginia to 
the Mexican frontier I Can it be possible, that a rebellion 
breathing a spirit so brutal and devilish, will escape the retribu- 
tion of offended Heaven ? Will the Great Architect of Nations 
long permit the torch of civilization to be thus inverted, to be 
thus audaciously held up, in the face of Christendom, the very 
symbol of darkness, barbarism and death ? 

1" Iq this important national effort, our eminent hydrographers, Edmund and 
George W. Blunt, were particularly efficient. From their abundant stores of ac- 
curate knowledge, the writer has been furnished with these Light-House statistics. 



44 



My honored axd well beloved Classmates : 

Let us not be dislieartened or deceived by tlie shadow, how- 
ever dark, now passnig over onr historic picture. Let us seek, 
with honest hearts and with unclouded vision to look off hope- 
fully into the Future, our own irresistible Future, the pre- 
destined and inevitable result of our richly teeming Past. 
Let us listen, with kindling hearts, to the animating appeal 
which lias this morning reached us, from the clearsighted and 
patriotic Head of our national finances, and manfully reecho 
his earnest and well timed assurance, that the inherent, unex- 
tinguishable resources of the loyal American people, are and 
ever will be adequate to every emergency. Let us see and feel, 
that when these barbarian war clouds blow out and blow 
over, as soon they must, our debt will disappear like the early 
morning mist, and that our beloved land, in all its length 
and breadth, will be re-illuminated by the ever blessed light 
of peace. 

Let us not forget, that of this bright and rapidly coming 
Future, even we, of the time-worn Class of 1814, are still a 
part ; that our race is not fully run, and that much may remain 
even yet, for us to do. While we mourn the cruel and un- 
merited sufferings of loyal men and of loyal women, both in 
the North and in the South, let us exert, to the last and to the 
uttermost, every faculty of our nature, to uphold that glorious 
Union committed to our keeping by our honored fathers, w^ith 
the solemn and undying conviction, that the tranquillity and 
happiness of a Continent, not for a day, but for centuries to 
come, are staked upon the pending conflict. 

Above all, let us ever devoutly trust to the wise and compre- 
hensive Providence of God, and always bear in mind, that in 
the inevitable logic of events, guided by His superintending 
hand, every present evil contains, within itself, the germ of great 



45 



and lasting good. If history be philosopliy teaching by example, 
let us reflect, that two centuries ago, the awful fire of London 
drove out the plague forever ; that even in our day, the dark and 
dingy lanes of Hamburgh, abandoned to the flames, gave birth 
to a new, and powerful, and brilliant city ; and that the 
continental Republic of the Western World, chastened by ad- 
versity, and purified by fire from blot or stain, may soon be 
found calmly but proudly resuming its accustomed march, ad- 
vancing with firm and unbroken step, onward and upward into 
the coming ages. 






The Committee of the Alumni of Yale College, under whose order the 
preceding Address has been printed, deem it proper to state, in explanation of 
a personal allusion at page 19, that Mr, Ruggles, immediately after receiving 
his Bachelor's Degree, in 1814, in his fifteenth year, commenced the study of 
Law, and pursued that profession at the City of New Tork, until 1831, 
when he retired from active practice, to devote himself to the improvement 
of the City, and to the public works of the State. From 1833 to 1838, he 
was actively engaged in the necessary preliminary measures for securing 
the construction of the Erie Railway, which now connects the City of New 
York with Lake Erie, and has become a continental trunk of the existing 
railway system extending westward from the Atlantic Ocean to the Missouri 
River. The work was actually commenced on the Delaware River, on the 
morning of the 3d of November, 1835, on which occasion, Mr. Ruggles, 
united with his co-Director, the late James G. King, in depositing the first 
load of earth in the embank«ient. 

In 1838, Mr. Ruggles was elected to the State Legislature, from the City 
of New York, and was made Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, 
of the Assembly. In that capacity, he presented a report, earnestly re- 
commending the more vigorous prosecution of the work of enlarging the 
Erie Canal, which became for years the subject of animated party conflict. 
He was one of the Canal Commissioners from 1839 to 1842, and afterwards, 
in 1858, and was President of their Board from 1840. 

In 1862, he was officially connected with the Pacific Railway Company, in- 
corporated by Congress, to extend the existing railway system westward from 
the Missouri River to the Pacific; and in that year was also appointed, under 
Legislative resolution. Commissioner in behalf of the State of New York, to 
urge upon Congress the further enlargement, for national purposes, of the 
New York canals. 

In 18G3, he was sent, as Delegate from the Government of the United 
States, to the International Statistical Congress at Berlin, to which body he 
presented a report on the Resources of the American Union. He also par- 
ticipated actively in their proceedings in respect to the international action 
needed to secure to the civihzed world a uniform system of Weights, Mea- 
sures, and Coins. He has also discharged, in part, " the debt which every 
lawyer owes his profession," by publishing, in 1856, an elaborate Report, on 
a special reference from the Supreme Court of New York, on the " Law of 
Burial," vindicating the legal right to protect the remains of the dead, by 
their next of kin. 

Yale College, August 10th, 1864* 



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